Enquiries concerning lettres de cachet, the consequences of arbitrary imprisonment, and a history of the inconveniences, distresses and sufferings of state prisoners. Written in the dungeon of the castle of Vincennes, by the Count de Mirabeau. With a preface by the translator
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- Enquiries concerning lettres de cachet, the consequences of arbitrary imprisonment, and a history of the inconveniences, distresses and sufferings of state prisoners. Written in the dungeon of the castle of Vincennes, by the Count de Mirabeau. With a preface by the translator translation has paratext
Summary (extracted citations)
‘The title of the present work seems only to announce a discussion purely local, and uninteresting to any other than the French nation; this, however, is far from being the case’. '(...) when he saw the author availing himself of his subject, to descant on the dreadful abuses of arbitrary power in every country, and in every age, and pointing out, with an admirable accuracy, great knowledge, and exquisite sensibility, the fatal consequences of the slightest infringement on the natural rights of mankind, and really, making his own sufferings but a secondary object in his undertakings, the translator, who glories in thinking with such men, determined to contribute his mite to the propagation of such principles, and, by submitting to his countrymen so affecting a display of the progress of despotism, to shew them how imperceptibly and completely a nation may lose its liberties, and be reduced to a desperate state of ostentatious, but wretches servitude’.
Notes
Translator's preface frames Mirabeau's work in universal struggle against despotism.